


Shelter

by Rhinozilla



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen, season 2-3 shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-07 07:38:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 14,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7706104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinozilla/pseuds/Rhinozilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Series of shorts surrounding the different shelters that the group utilized between season 2 and season 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Night in a Museum

The place was no Smithsonian, and T-Dog knew a thing or two about the Smithsonian, but it had thick chains to lock the doors and an untouched staff break room full of stocked vending machines, so for the night, the little museum was better than the Taj Mahal. Wait, the Taj Mahal was a mausoleum, a tomb…Rephrase, this place was better than Petra, Jordan. Yeah, that sounded better.

“Where do you want to sleep tonight?” He prompted the others who were drearily unloading their gear. “Looks like we got Styrofoam pyramids from Ancient Egypt, a taste of Rome a la a miniature Coliseum, or…the Ice Age…I dunno how to make that sound good.”

“Somebody’s in a good mood,” Carol grinned, the only one showing any appreciation for where they were at the moment.

“We’re surrounded by history,” he held out his hands. “Actual proof that humankind moves on and perseveres. How are ya’ll NOT appreciating this?”

Lori smirked as she opened her bedroll, and Carl looked mildly interested in the area of the museum focusing on dinosaurs, but other than that, the atmosphere fell flat. T-Dog huffed at their dryness and decided to make his bed over by the poster of the Mayan calendar, chuckling to himself at the irony of that thing.

“Hey,” Maggie and Beth returned with two pillow cases full of snacks and drinks from the vending machines. “It’s mostly chips and crackers, but it’s something.”

So it was a quiet night, again, listening to everybody’s teeth crunch pretzels and stale Doritos. There were no windows in the place, so Glenn had to stand outside to take watch. T-Dog figured he’d take second shift, if he didn’t fall asleep first. If he did, well, it wasn’t like Daryl hadn’t had been sitting on pins and needles since they got here. He didn’t know what had crawled up that guy’s ass, but he was steering clear.

“Look,” Beth spoke suddenly, lying on her back beside Hershel and pointing up at the ceiling.

It looked like some high school art students had been commissioned to paint the solar system on the smooth, flat ceiling. Was it tacky? Hell yes, but it wasn’t a bad sight. It was better than lying on the cold, damp grass, with no roof over their heads, staring up at the real stars.

“They left out Pluto,” Carl noted aloud.

“Those bastards,” Maggie mumbled, and T-Dog wasn’t sure if she was serious or not.

They all stared up at the ceiling for a while, sans Glenn on watch and Daryl, who had finally meandered his way over to one corner of the room and was making noise in his attempt to make a fire. It was quiet. Dusty. Drafty. Smelled like old paper. You couldn’t beat a museum.

“How do you think history is going to remember us?” Beth spoke up again.

“Will they remember us?” Carl countered, and the room seemed to still with his words.

A long paused ballooned inside the room, and T-Dog pursed his lips, looking up at the burning yellow circle representing the sun.

“They will,” Rick finally responded. “And I hope they do so gently.”

Hershel smiled at that, and T-Dog saw Lori smile as well, chancing a quick look at her estranged husband. He thought they could all use a dose of remembering things gently…

At the other edge of his vision, he saw Carol cover her mouth and saw her shoulders twitch with a laugh. Nobody else seemed to notice, too wrapped up in their thoughts, but T-Dog caught her eye and lifted an eyebrow in question.

The woman lowered her hand, pursing her lips hard but her eyes were full of amusement, and she gestured to the corner of room where the smoke was coming from. Curious, T-Dog followed her point.

You couldn’t MAKE this shit up.

There was Daryl Dixon, in his ratty clothes and covered in dirt, squatting on his haunches beside a cluster of kindling and tender, literally striking a flint rock to try and start a fire…in the caveman exhibit. There was even a damn cave outline painted on the wall.

It was all T-Dog could do to just stare in slackjawed amazement at the irony. There was a God, and He had a sense of humor.

As soon as the flicker of a flame began to eat at the curls of paper in the fire hole, Daryl slapped the dirt off his hands on the thighs of his pants and looked up to find both Carol, T-Dog, and Lori (who had also noticed by that point) staring at him in unabashed amusement.

“The Hell ya’ll lookin’ at?” he snapped, only serving to get everybody else’s attention fixed in his direction.

“Nothing,” Rick remarked, making a short wave with his hand. “Just…y’know we’ve got a lighter. There’s no need to…reinvent the wheel…”

Maggie lost it at that, hiding her face in her sister’s shoulder. Daryl glanced from Rick to Maggie and then to Lori, who lifted her hands innocently.

“I don’t know what her problem is, but what are you gonna…yabba-dabba-do?” She said sweetly.

That one broke Carol and had her swatting Lori playfully on the arm. Daryl stopped looking confused and shifted into just pissed, narrowing in on Carl.

“What?” He demanded a straight answer.

Carl pointed behind him, “Turn around, dude.”

Daryl turned and soaked in his situation, while T-Dog and the others collectively lost the remainders of their shit. Even Hershel clapped his hands a few times as he chuckled at the man’s expense.

“You buncha…dammit…shut up!” Daryl stomped away from the little fire, fuming over to take second watch from Glenn early.

“Yeah, yeah, go cool off, ya redneck Neanderthal,” T-Dog snorted, waving him off.

He got a string of curses slung in his direction for that, followed by a slamming door and a confused Glenn stepping back into the room. Carol recovered herself first and went after him.

Glenn looked around at them all holding their sides and wiping tears of mirth from their eyes. “I missed something funny, didn’t I?”


	2. Boat Rental Shack

One of the best set ups that the group had over the winter was a week long stint in a boat rental shack beside a freshwater lake. Carl, Daryl, and Maggie wouldn’t have agreed with that statement, as the latter two spent three days of that week puking on a neverending loop. The weather was mild, the walkers were scarce, and they were able to rig up the batteries from the rental boats to run the heater in the shack at night.

Hershel knew that Carl was having a hard time adjusting to his role in the group. He was still a child, but he was growing up in a world that demanded more of him. Rick demanded more of him. And most upsetting, he was demanding more of himself. That kind of pressure was heartbreaking to watch, but it was necessary…for reasons that had become evident during that week.

This life wasn’t all about shooting walkers and hunting animals. Those things were important and vital to survival, but so were other things, like sterilized medical tools, a constant supply of firewood, and clean water. Those were things that didn’t feel as important to a child living with the constant threat of the walking dead. Carl made his feelings about being assigned to the more menial work known, that he didn’t feel like fetching firewood and untangling fishing lines was all that important. So when he was assigned to boil the water before refilling the canteens, that mentality was the same.

By the morning after he did that chore, Maggie was sicker than Hershel had seen in years, and Daryl was burning so hot that Lori had frantically checked him for a bite. With no thermometer to see how much danger either of them were in, Hershel had made the call to break the morning frost off of the shallow shoreline and pack it around their pulse points. Maggie’s skin had become so sensitive that the action had reduced her to tears, breaking Hershel’s heart as she did so.

Vomiting quickly changed to dry heaving, and T-Dog had by then boiled fresh batches of water after a swig from a canteen left Rick feeling woozy a few hours later.

“Keep them hydrated,” Hershel told Carol. “They just have to push through this.”

Hearing Maggie breathing through a shredded throat was painful, just as it was to watch Daryl’s spine occasionally spasm with his body’s attempt to vomit. There was nothing left to come up. Maggie was only just beginning to keep fluids down, but if Daryl didn’t improve in the next three hours, Hershel was going to have to run an IV on him.

Beth hadn’t left her sister’s side since Glenn and T-Dog made a run to a nearby gas station to rummage for anything to relieve the pain. Hershel was proud to see her taking care of Maggie like she was, smoothing her hair and helping her drink, trying to comfort her. Similarly, Carol had planted herself beside Daryl, and every spasm from him seemed to transfer to her, as the woman twitched and grimaced in sympathy every time he did so.

With Maggie and Daryl finally getting some rest between painful dry heave attacks, Hershel went to double check his medicine bag for any helpful items that he may have overlooked. Instead, he found Carl at the edge of camp, repeatedly and ferociously dismantling their arsenal of weapons: taking them apart, cleaning them, and reassembling them in record time.

“Son,” Hershel called out gently. “I think they’re good.”

As though jogged from a trance, Carl jerked and looked at Hershel with wide, swollen eyes. “Are they alive? Are they okay? What—“ he hiccupped and lowered his head, the brim of the sheriff’s hat hiding his face.

Hershel winced and sank to sit next to the boy on the lowered tailgate of the silver truck. “Finally sleeping…at least, Maggie is. Daryl is hard to tell.”

“You should get back. What if something happens and they need you?”

“Bethy and Carol are with them. Glenn and T-Dog will be back shortly.” Hershel flicked the edge of the sheriff’s hat to lure Carl’s face out. “Are you okay?”

Carl looked at him with shame etched on his face. “I almost killed them. I could have killed them. I wasn’t paying attention to the water. I thought it was stupid when I could have been doing something more important…and now—“ he made a vague hand gesture and his shoulders bowed inward.

Hershel took a moment, glancing toward Lori, who was curled up on a sleeping back on Carol’s other side, dozing and holding the other woman’s hand in support. Rick was noisily gathering more firewood at the perimeter, having recovered from his mild encounter.

“Maggie and Daryl are tough. They’re going to be just fine, Carl.”

“What if it was somebody else? What if it was Mom?” Carl tensed in horror.

Lori had had a rough few days a while back. There had been some minor bleeding and dizzy spells that had resulted in one potentially ugly fall, had Glenn not grabbed her in time. It had put the fear of miscarriage and complications into all of their minds. She had recovered, but the fear had remained. Hershel could see it in Carl’s stature now.

“Well, we’ll just have to be more careful from now on,” Hershel stated.

Carl shook his head, face lowered again. “No. I don’t wanna be in charge of boiling water anymore. I could get somebody sick again.”

“Not if we’re diligent,” Hershel chided lightly. “That’s all we can do nowadays is be diligent and be thorough. We take responsibility, and we take it seriously.” He tapped Carl’s knee and paused until Carl met his eyes. “Doesn’t mean we don’t make mistakes, just that we learn from them. Nobody died. There should be no long term effects. In a week, Maggie and Daryl will be good as new.”

Carl looked hopeful but not entirely trusting of that statement. “Will they hate me? Because it was my fault…all of this.”

The change in his tone gave Hershel pause. “All of this what?”

Fresh tears met Carl’s young eyes. “It was my gunshot…at the farm…That herd…It might have just kept walking on and not touched the farm, but I shot Shane and they were drawn to the noise…That’s why we got run off and that’s why Jimmy and Patricia died.”

“Nonsense,” Hershel said. “What happened would have likely happened at some point anyway, thinking back on it now. All the livestock, the swamps freezing, it was a ticking time bomb. You can’t move forward if you keep looking back. We learn. S’why we made silencers and use melee weapons if we can.”

The crunch of gravel alerted them to Glenn and T-Dog’s return, and Hershel straightened, clasping Carl’s shoulder.

“Why don’t you go see if you can help Rick carry that firewood back?”

Carl immediately scampered off to obey, and Hershel watched him go as the Tucson rolled to a stop beside the silver Dodge. Glenn was already climbing out of the passenger side with a shopping bag full of little bottles and beelining toward the others.

“Guess who found the motherload of Pepto Bismol?!”


	3. Room to Breathe

One week had passed since fleeing the Greene farm, and the going had been lean. They had scavenged just enough supplies to stay alive day to day, but the days were getting shorter. Sunlight was a hot commodity, and it was too dangerous to make runs at night. Now it was dusk, they had had an unfulfilling meal of fish and snake meat, and Rick’s reign had so far gone unquestioned.

Carol couldn’t say she was entirely comfortable with it. She had gone without a voice for years in her marriage; she was reluctant to be silenced again just because democracy was messy and Rick’s way was easier. That being said, his calls since leaving the farm that night had been sound, even if she was still miffed about his hiding the truth about the infection from them.

The others were settling down in the single wide trailer that they had found. There had only been one walker inside, which Glenn had dispatched with no incident. Carol stood outside wrapped in her light jacket, watching the horizon change colors with the setting sun. Crickets were chirping in the overgrown yard, and a few lightning bugs were bobbing around the bank of the small pond on the property. It was a serene place.

She heard the door to the trailer open, and quiet footsteps crunched on the grass as the person walked up beside her. Lori hadn’t spoken a word in two days, not since every last detail about what happened among her, Rick, and Shane had come to light. Carl had torn away from her, feeling betrayed. Rick barely acknowledged her existence. The rest of the group chose sides, as humans do, but they kept their decisions and opinions to themselves. Talking about it wasn’t their business, and doing so would have only poisoned the atmosphere.

“The sun just keeps rising and falling, doesn’t it?” Lori finally spoke.

Carol hummed lightly in agreement. Her thumb pushed at her wedding band, rotating it on her ring finger: an old nervous habit.

“So much has changed, but so much of everything else just keeps…going,” Lori made a vague gesture before folding her arms across her chest.

The breeze was humid. The surface of the pond was foggy.

“Carol, please,” Lori’s voice cracked unexpectedly. “I can’t—“

Carol looked at her in alarm. The other woman’s shoulders were hunched inward, and her face was lowered, contorting as she tried to hold back a reservoir. Because no one wanted to choose sides and knew it wasn’t their place to talk about it…Carol realized that that meant no one had let Lori talk about it. Rick didn’t want to talk about it, but Lori needed to. She needed someone, and her husband and her son had pulled away from her.

Lori glanced up at Carol defensively, but Carol tilted her head and tried to give a reassuring smile. She wrapped an arm around the woman supportively and gave her a squeeze.

“It’s only been a week. We’re all still adjusting,” Carol said softly. “They’ll come around.”

“How? Look at what’s happened because of me.”

“Men are idiots,” Carol said plainly, but there was no heat in her tone. “Everything has to be the woman’s fault, otherwise men might have to take responsibility for their own actions.”

“I pushed him away…I pushed Rick away because he killed Shane—after I all but told him that Shane was a threat that might need to be…” Lori choked, wiping chastely at her eyes. “I didn’t tell him about what happened between Shane and I until after he’d figured it out for himself. Dale knew…Did all of you know? In Atlanta?”

Carol grimaced but answered bluntly, “Yes.”

It was a small camp where keeping tabs on each other was critical. Two people couldn’t sneak away at the same time, come back at the same time, with tousled hair and rumpled clothes, and have no one do the math. Not addressing it had been…polite.

Lori cringed in embarrassment and put her face in her hands. “God…”

Carol rubbed her thumb over her wedding ring again. “It’ll take time for Rick to calm down, but he’ll get over it. So will Carl. It’s just a lot to process right now.”

“What if they don’t?” Lori straightened, pushing her hair back. “What if they never stop hating me? And this baby…”

Her face crumpled at that, and she choked on a sob again.

Carol swallowed and glanced down at her wedding ring, rotating on her finger. Her eyes remained glued to it, but she spoke to Lori.

“It hurts right now because you think you’ve lost something,” she murmured. “Your marriage might not recover from this; maybe it will, but it will never be like it was before. Rick is angry. Let him be angry for a while. Let Carl be angry for a while. They’ll come back to you…Anger is just…It’s a response. It’s apathy you have to fear.”

Carol looked up to find Lori looking at her, tears running down her cheeks but her face drawn, watching Carol questioningly. The older woman smiled grimly, tugging her wedding ring off of her finger and holding it closer to her face to inspect it. Both women eyed the ring for a long moment, each lost in their thoughts as to what a ring like this signified.

Then, without a word, Carol turned and flung the thing away from her, watching it sail over the grass and land with a plunk in the pond. It sunk immediately, and the pond’s surface became smooth again. Carol stared at the pond, her thumb rubbing against the naked skin of her ring finger. A weight fell off her shoulders like an avalanche, and she breathed for what felt like the first time in over a decade. The air tasted like grass, honey suckle, and smoke from the campfire. It tasted like freedom.

When she looked slowly to Lori, the woman was clutching her hand to her chest, cradling her own wedding ring to her heart, staring lost at the pond, like the idea of throwing away her ring was horrifying…as it should be. Carol could throw hers away because it meant nothing to her, because it hadn’t for a long time. Lori’s ring still meant something; it was still a promise and a vow between her and Rick. It was tarnished and it was imperfect, but it was worth saving.

That fact settled in the air between the two women, and Lori seemed to breathe again too, if only marginally.

“Come on, let’s go inside,” Carol invited, turning to face the trailer.

The sun had gone down, but it would come back up tomorrow.


	4. Ye Olde College Library

There were four interconnected buildings that comprised the small community college where the group had decided to hole up for the night. Only one of the buildings had no damage to it. The cafeteria and the workshops had been wiped out; other survivors had come along before them and raided the food and anything close to a weapon. The only building left untouched was the one housing the student library and bookstore. A few books had spilled off the shelves, but no windows were broken and no doors were smashed in.

It would have to do.

They parked the red Suburban and the green Tucson by the back entrance for a clean getaway, should they need one. Rick and Daryl ran the sweep, took out two walkers, and Glenn and T-Dog dragged the bodies outside while the others unloaded their supplies for the night. There was a skylight in the middle of the bookstore, which Maggie busted out so that they could use it for ventilation for a campfire.

Most of them hadn’t eaten in two days. What meager rations they had were given wholly to Lori and Carl. Beth wasn’t sure how much longer they could go. She had already seen Carol have a dizzy spell, and Rick’s shooting aim had been wobbly. The bookstore only had two vending machines. One was half full of soda bottles. The other had chips and candy bars. Beth found herself almost choking on a candy wrapper in her haste as she and the others split the portion among themselves.

Lori took watch while they settled in. The nights had been cold for a while, but now the day time was getting just as bad. Frost was beginning to greet them during the day, though it hadn’t snowed yet. They barely had the clothes for the autumn season; there was no telling how bad this winter was going to get.

Beth hugged her knees to her chest, watching T-Dog start up the fire in the middle of the room. The cut across her wrist had healed, but it had left a pale scar on her skin. Often, she found herself running a thumb along the raised line of skin: a reminder of what she had overcome. Maggie came and sank to sit next to her, exhaling heavily from weary bones.

“This kindling is only going to last so long,” T-Dog stated plainly, straightening as the tiny flames began to breathe.

“We need real firewood,” Hershel remarked.

Daryl shook his head across the room. “Been rainin’ past two days. Ain’t no dry wood out there.”

“We just need something that burns,” Rick chimed in, pacing across the length of the room in thought.

“Maybe we could share body heat?” Carl offered. “Is that effective?”

Glenn stepped into view, out from between two shelves of books. “What about this?”

He was holding a thick dictionary in both hands. He looked around at them all with an optimistic expression.

“Paper…closest thing we have to wood. It’ll work just the same.”

“We’re burning books now?” Lori murmured quietly.

“It’s not the Bible or Harry Potter,” Glenn countered. “It’s a dictionary. There’re loads of…of instruction manuals and Cliffs Notes and newspaper back here to use.”

Beth pursed her lips and shared a contemplative look with her sister.

“That’ll work.” Daryl bobbed his head and shouldered past Glenn to get more.

T-Dog frowned, but he stood and followed Daryl to help. Glenn must have noted the two Greene women’s discomfort, because he walked over and squatted in front of them.

“It’s this or no fire,” he reasoned. “I don’t like it either, but we have to do what we have to do.”

“I know,” Maggie closed her eyes briefly. “It just feels…wrong.”

Beth chewed the inside of her cheek and looked at their wilting little fire. This world just seemed to take and take and take from them. Nothing was sacred anymore.

“The Hell is this shit?” Daryl stomped into view, holding a square little book, with an indignant look on his face.

Beth couldn’t make out the title of what he was holding, but she recognized the face of the author on the front. An abrupt snort from Carol got a narrow look from Daryl, and the woman pursed her lips hard to flatten the grin.

You Might Be a Redneck If…by Jeff Foxworthy.

“Hm, remedial calculus,” T-Dog reappeared with an armload of textbooks. “It will not be a hardship to burn these.”

Daryl remained silently affronted at the little book in his hand, but Carol and T-Dog continued moving materials from the shelves to use as kindling. College level psychology, advanced business applications, introductory origami: soon their dying fire was breathing happily.

“Managerial Economics,” Glenn lifted up one dense text. “I gave two semesters to this in college.”

He shot the book a nasty look and dramatically tossed it onto the fire.

“Are we creating an effigy now?” Maggie quipped.

Beth smiled despite herself.

Daryl was sulking in the corner, thumbing through the offending little book, but occasionally snorting at the content, raising an eyebrow almost like he was agreeing with some of it.

“Hard to believe I was shopping for these books last year,” Beth muttered.

If things hadn’t…If the world still existed, she would have been elbow deep in classes right now. She had been thinking about taking a few college courses her senior year of high school, just to get a jump on the course load. Obviously none of that mattered now. That world was gone. What a waste.

“Some of this may be useful,” Hershel remarked.

He hadn’t actively helped cart the books for the slaughter, and Beth could see him pondering over a few textbooks across the room.

“Nobody has time for leisure reading anymore,” Rick mumbled, turning a couple of bullet casings around in his hand idly.

“No, but what we do need is to be more efficient,” Hershel stated. “There are books here on biology, chemistry, and engineering that are directly designed to be educational. They could give us some insight into better ways to interact with the world.”

He was putting it delicately; they were barely surviving out here.

Of their group, Beth figured Daryl was the only person who could believably survive long term on his own. None of the rest of them could hunt or track or any of that. Her dad was tough, and living on a farm had taught them how to take care of themselves, but this was different. They had become nomadic. Nowhere was permanent. Nowhere was safe. The only rules left that the world followed was that you needed water, food, shelter, and clothing to survive. Nothing else was important.

Carol cleared her throat to break the blank silence that had settled over the group, and she meandered over to Hershel, speaking to him in a low voice. They had been on the road for two months now. Lori was starting to show, and Hershel had been teaching Carol some medical matters, so that she could help him when the time came.

These books might be able to help with that, Beth mused. Her dad was also the only person among them with any medical knowledge. Rick had been a cop; he probably knew some basic first aid. The others only knew what life had taught them on a daily basis. Those science books might come in handy.

With that in mind, Beth climbed to her feet and made her way to the pile of science books that her dad had saved from the campfire. She turned through them absently, feeling a bud of hope plant itself in her chest. She knew she wasn’t the best with a gun, and she was never first string for going on supply runs. But she could still contribute.

She knew first aid, but these textbooks might help her learn more. All the group did was run. Sometimes they fell. Sometimes they got sick. Sometimes they needed medicine. If for some reason her dad couldn’t take care of them in that situation, who would? Maybe Carol or Rick.

Or Beth.

Plucking up an intermediate text on human anatomy, Beth backed over to her spot beside Maggie and sank back down. Carl looked over at her quizzically, but he didn’t ask.

“C’mon,” Glenn was egging Lori, almost playfully. “You know you want to.”

Lori had her arms folded and a frown set, but her eyes were soft, and Lord knew they needed any snippet of humor they could get these days. Finally, with a sigh, Lori took the roll of newspaper from Glenn, folded it up, and tossed it into the fire. Daryl followed it immediately with the little book of redneck jokes.

Apparently they weren’t funny enough.


	5. If You Built It

“Aliens?”

“Yeah.”

“Ghosts?”

“Yeah.”

The first stars in over a week were peeking out of the gloomy sky. Carol’s claustrophobia had been shaken awake by the shelter that they had settled in for the night. The baseball diamond was minor league size, with bleachers wrapping around both base lines and a full grill concession stand nestled at the back of the structure behind home plate. There were a few bodies littered about, but none of them had been walking when the group arrived.

Even for a minor league establishment, the concession building wasn’t exactly comfortable for a group of ten people. That was especially true when you factored in that Glenn and Maggie had been…not exactly fighting, but they were…still trying to find out how their relationship worked. They were trying to get to know each other outside of survival.

Carol wasn’t sure how that all worked anymore. What you needed to know about people was different now than it had been before this mess. Favorite music, favorite movies, career paths, and favorite foods had been replaced with favorite weapon, hunting skills, medical or combat experience, and how fast you could run.

Not exactly casual conversation.

Daryl didn’t seem to mind. Carol had decided to get some fresh air outside of the cramped quarters, and sitting down beside Daryl on watch just made fresh air all the better.

“Elvis?”

“Dead.”

“Paul McCartney?”

“Alive…Well, he was. Dunno ‘bout now.”

Carol snorted, pausing to think of another random question, but this time Daryl beat her to it, pointing directly at her, dead serious.

“Star Trek or Star Wars?”

That got a laugh out of her, which she stifled against her sleeve.

“I plead the fifth on that one.”

He shook his head in disappointment and glanced toward the field again.

“Baseball or football?” Carol prompted.

“Neither. I look like a jock to you?”

“You’re a red blooded American man. You had zero interest in sports?”

“You’re a red blooded American woman. You any interest in…” His smart remark seemed to stall as he couldn’t come up with a stereotype quick enough.

“…making sandwiches?” Carol lifted a daring eyebrow.

Daryl rolled his eyes. “Fuck that.” He fiddled absently with one of his homemade arrows. “Never understood that whole ‘get in the kitchen’ thing.”

“Ooh,” Carol let out a low whistle. “This’ll be interesting.”

He deadpanned, “Nah, it’s just…Kitchens got knives and fire and shit. The fuck kind of insult is that? Person in a kitchen’d kill ya quieter’n any bullet. Peanut allergy?” He snapped his fingers. “Dead.”

Carol chuckled and sat back in her seat. “Ed had a peanut allergy. It was mild though.”

Daryl was quiet for a moment before looking at her seriously. “You test that theory?”

Carol didn’t respond, huddling against the night chill and looking up at the stars. The night was far from clear, but being able to see stars at all lately was a blessing.

“Do you believe in God, Daryl?”

“No.”

“Have you ever tried?”

He paused a half second. “More’n I care to admit.”

A long silence stretched between them after that. The sound of the group settling in and trying to sleep was beginning to quiet. The quiet with Daryl was comfortable, and being outside with him was preferable to the close walls in there.

Daryl broke the silence first. “What kind of food you like? Used to like?”

Carol smiled into the dimness of the night. “I’m always up for Italian food. There used to be this little restaurant in town; they served the most amazing stuffed ravioli.”

He snorted, “Miss fancy.”

“Hey, I enjoy a cheeseburger just as much as the next person. You?”

He shrugged as a non-answer, and Carol stared at him flatly until he looked at her. Flustered, he shifted and folded his arms.

“Don’t really have a favorite anything. Just ate whatever I killed that day.”

“My God,” Carol uttered in mock shock, shielding her eyes from his face.

Daryl looked at her, “What?”

“The manliness is just too intense,” she teased lightly. “Really though, if the world was back for just one hour, what would you get to eat?”

Daryl chewed the inside of his lip in thought before replying. “A Wendy’s Frosty.”

“Nice,” Carol chuckled. “I used to dip my French fries in those.”

“You’re a sick woman.”

“Don’t knock it until you try it.”

“That is disgusting. No.”


	6. Make Bank

Grocery shops, gas stations, weapons dealers, outdoor camping stores: every single one that the group had come across had been gutted, torn apart, and emptied of everything of use to them. Lately, winter clothing stores that they had come across had been looted too by other survivors. They found abandoned camps where other groups had attempted to seek shelter, along with splatters of dried blood and shredded tents where that attempt had ended as all attempts did: running when the walkers came. Walkers always came.

Funny how what had been important in the old world had no power now. Internet cafes, electronic stores, movie theatres…almost untouched. Even the bank where they had bedded down for the night was almost entirely unscathed by looters and survivors. The vault was locked. The glass windows boarded and the doors barricaded by metal gates, but there were no signs of thieves. There hadn’t been time for that when the Turn occurred.

They secured the lobby, unloading their gear and trying to make hard tile floor comfortable enough to sleep on. Maggie and T-Dog dragged a couch out of an executive office for Lori, and everybody else rummaged for cushions and pillows off the expensive furniture rather than moving the heavy pieces. It was a recently refurbished bank, all laid out with modern furniture fashioned out of steel and aluminum, “like something out of Star Trek” as Glenn put it. It hadn’t left much in the way of wood for tinder or kindling for a fire.

So they burned money from the registers.

“I feel like somebody should say something poetic about this,” Glenn remarked as they sat huddled around their small fire.

He looked to Hershel, as did Carl and Beth. Hershel, for his part, appeared to be lost in his thoughts, watching the corners curl and blacken on a stack of twenty dollar bills in the flames. Carol smiled softly to Carl, whose eyelids were starting to weigh heavy. Sitting upright against the teller desk beside him, Rick’s eyes were doing the exact same thing.

Glenn could feel the bone deep exhaustion creeping through his body, and he could see it reflected in Carol’s eyes, in Maggie’s jawline, in T-Dog’s shoulders, in Beth’s yawning, and in Daryl’s slow pacing across the room where he kept watch by the barred doors. Lori had fallen asleep half an hour ago. They were running low on…just about everything. There had only been two vending machines in the employee break room, containing only enough expired chips and flat soda to dull the ever-present ache of hunger.

He really missed that wild boar that Daryl had brought in…two weeks ago? Three? Didn’t matter, keeping track of time didn’t matter anymore. Well, not on a day to day scale. Lori was about five months into her pregnancy. It had become pretty clear to them all what that meant as far as paternity…but…it didn’t matter.

“What’s that?” Carol abruptly asked.

Glenn followed her gaze to Beth, who was flipping through a hand-sized notebook covered in writing. The girl glanced to Carol and realized that she had a bit of a curious audience. T-Dog pointed at her.

“We see you scribbling in that thing every night. What gives?”

Beth pursed her lips and shrugged. “Just…notes. Keeping track of stuff. It’s stupid.”

Maggie nudged her with a soft look. “What kind of stuff?”

Beth tilted her head, took a breath, and flipped through the pages. “I’ve been keeping track of the days. Inventory. Just…ideas about using stuff that we find…”

“That’s smart, honey,” Hershel patted her knee.

“Is it January yet?” Glenn asked.

“What?” Beth looked at him.

He lifted his shoulders, “Just curious to see if this year is over yet. Starting a-new, resolutions and things like that.”

Carol chuckled, and Beth offered a rueful smile.

“It’s December. Christmas was two days ago,” she explained.

Rick snored once, where his head had tilted back against the teller desk. The action made him wake himself up, and he blinked blearily at everyone twice before giving up and lowering himself completely horizontal to the floor, getting comfy. T-Dog snorted.

“At least somebody’s getting some sleep around here,” he mused, glancing toward where Daryl’s pacing was slowing.

Carol and Glenn looked over as well, and T-Dog got to his feet.

“Yeah, it’s a Silent Night all right,” he grumbled, going over to take second watch and relieve Daryl.

Carol scooted closer to Glenn, making a space.

“I guess we missed Christmas,” Maggie said quietly.

Glenn reached out and took her hand, rubbing his thumb against her knuckles. She looked at him and smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“I dunno,” Carol remarked, “Hershel has quite the beard going. We might start calling you Saint Nick.”

The group around the fire chuckled as Hershel thoughtfully patted at his white beard.

“W’so funny?” Daryl approached the fire, setting the crossbow down.

The heavy end clattered on the tile, and Carl jerked in his sleep. Daryl grimaced at that, but the kid didn’t wake up, so Daryl plopped down beside Carol in T-Dog’s vacated spot.

“Just spreading some holiday cheer,” Glenn said, as Beth stowed her notebook away.

At Daryl’s deadpan look, Hershel sat up straighter, “Ho, ho, ho.”

Maggie laughed into her hand, “Guess this means we aren’t exchanging gifts?”

Glenn snapped up a twig that hadn’t been eaten by the fire. “Or mistletoe?” He held it over Maggie’s head and kissed her.

“Smooth,” T-Dog chimed in dryly from the perimeter.

Carol cocked her head, “I’d take a set of fluffy mittens.” She blew into her hands.

Glenn caught Daryl side-eyeing Carol for a moment, and then the redneck reached behind him, pulling up a handful of wrapped bills.

“Sorry,” Daryl apologized, “All I got is about…” he thumbed through the bills, “fifty thousand dollars.”

He dropped the money by Carol’s knee. She giggled and picked up one of the stacks.

“Try not to spend it in one place,” Daryl mumbled, situating himself to go to sleep.

“Whoo. Merry Christmas to you too,” Carol hummed, tossing the stack into the fire.

Glenn pointed his ‘mistletoe’ stick at the two. “That was smooth.”

With his back turned to Carol and the others, Daryl had curled into a prickly little hedgehog ball attempting to sleep, but they heard him grumble a sleepy “Shut up.”

Maggie chimed in, “And a partridge in a pear tree.”


	7. A Barn in an Ice Storm

Despite the roar of rain slamming across the tin roof of the barn and the screaming silence of the rest of the group, Carl could still distinctly hear his parents arguing loudly and viciously in the far corner of the barn. In the four months that the group had been on the road since leaving the Greene farm, Rick and Lori had only fought like this three times. In between the fights were really long stretches of complete silence, when they mostly just refused to acknowledge each other. His mom cried in her sleep sometimes; his dad decided to kill walkers with blunt objects instead of his gun. Rick told Carl it was because it was quieter than a gunshot, but Carl figured his dad just needed an outlet sometimes.

Carl knew everything now…as far as why his parents were fighting. Neither of them took the time to explain it to him. None of the others had either; they just kept saying it wasn’t their business or their place to tell him. Which was…was bullshit…in his opinion. He figured things out for himself…And Maggie had finally explained the whole baby thing.

Since then, Carl found himself avoiding both of his parents. He wasn’t sure what to think, and he didn’t want to pick a side. Everybody else was picking sides. They didn’t say it out loud, and they weren’t obvious about it, but he could feel it. Luckily, his dad had decided that Carl was responsible enough to take watch of the camp at night, so that particular night, Carl had planted himself on the second level of the barn, bundled up in a blanket and watching the storm roll across the open field from the window in the loft. Beside him, Daryl was spasmodically checking the sights on the crossbow and squinting at the horizon.

Well, okay, so maybe it wasn’t Carl’s turn to be on watch, but with the hateful shouting happening on the lower floor, the idea of sitting around everyone else’s pitying stares was awful. Besides, as long as Carl didn’t pester Daryl, then Daryl wouldn’t try to talk to Carl. Sometimes that was irritating, but on afternoons like this, it was perfect.

They’d been stuck in the barn for two days and nights now. The ice storm had frozen the roads, and it was freezing outside. Fortunately, the weather seemed to also be slowing down the walkers. They were great for target practice. Carl had gotten pretty good with a gun, but ever since he had seen Daryl practicing throwing knives at walkers from a distance, he had been wanting to try that too. But, just like learning the crossbow, that request had gone ignored.

“Check out this asshole,” Daryl grunted, breaking their hour-long silence.

Carl glanced at Daryl and then followed his gaze out into the field. Their three cars were parked in a triangle, pointing toward the road in case of an emergency getaway. It took a few seconds, but Carl spotted a walker staggering out of the woods about a hundred yards away. Its clothes were stiff with ice, and one of its legs wouldn’t bend as it limped toward the cars at a creeping pace. It was a man in a business suit, and half of his scalp was missing.

“Just one?” Carl said, looking toward the treeline.

The walker appeared to be on his own, and he was listing to the right as his frozen leg refused to cooperate. Carl’s hand involuntarily tightened around his gun, but Daryl was already lining the walker up in his crossbow sights.

“Think so,” Daryl mumbled, going still as he aimed. Carl remained quiet and kept his eyes on the walker. “Pick an eye,” Daryl unexpectedly offered.

Carl glanced at him, “Really?” He looked to the walker again. “The…the left one.”

Two full seconds passed before the familiar phewt of the crossbow blew past his ear, followed by the sight of the stiff legged walker jerking on its feet and crumpling in a heap to the frozen earth. The arrow stuck out of the walker’s cheek, three inches under its left eye.

“S’close,” Carl chirped.

Beside him, Daryl huffed, “Shut up.”

Carl snorted, “Are you gonna get the arrow?”

“Soon as this shit clears up,” Daryl made a vague gesture to the pouring skies overhead.

Carl chewed on the inside of his lip, rubbing his palms together to warm them as he looked out at the fallen walker. Lifting his eyes briefly to the ice falling from the clouds, he blinked and returned his gaze to the ground below.

“Y’think…this, uh, this…shit,” he mumbled, tilting his head just-so toward the raised voices of his parents in the barn behind them, “will ever clear up?”

He felt more than saw Daryl stiffen beside him. At first, Carl thought he was going to get scolded for using a bad word, but he had sworn in front of Daryl before, and Daryl had cursed around him uncountable times, so he dismissed that as the reason why the man looked uncomfortable all of a sudden.

“Maybe,” Daryl finally muttered, shifting in his seat and keeping his eyes on the horizon.

“What happens if they don’t?” Carl pressed.

“They ain’t goin’ nowhere. Figure eventually they’ll just wear themselves out,” Daryl shrugged.

“I don’t want to choose a side,” Carl pulled his knees to his chest.

Daryl heaved a sigh and Carl distinctly heard him mutter under his breath, “Fuck.”

“Sorry,” Carl panicked, starting to back up and get to his feet, thinking that now the most neutral person in the group was angry at him.

“Sit down, bud,” Daryl grunted. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it. Sorry.”

Carl tentatively sank back to his seat, keeping carefully quiet.

“They tryin’ to make you pick a side?”

“…No, but—“

“Then don’t.”

Hearing it put that simply, Carl felt his shoulders grow a little lighter and he relaxed slightly. Movement at the treeline caught their attentions, and it was revealed to be a female walker, missing an arm and with deep gouge marks across her torso, staggering with the same stiff legs as the first one. It tripped once, and the skin of one leg abruptly split open, spilling out splintered muscle tendons and tissue that had frozen stiff. The walker fell on her face, clawing with her remaining hand toward the barn. Her moans were muted by the sound of the icy rain.

“Hey,” Daryl bobbed his head, sliding a fresh arrow into the crossbow and taking aim. “Pick an eye.”


	8. Clearing a Split Level House

From the outside, the one level brick house looked untouched. There were no vehicles parked near it, no external damage to suggest looting, and no visible walkers. The group had fallen into a loose system of sweeping through a house before making camp inside it after nearly two months on the road, and so far the house had been empty.

Carol could hear Carl sifting through the cabinets in the kitchen behind her in search of canned goods, while she stepped through the dining room. The gun still felt odd in her hands, but it was more of a comfort than a fear nowadays. Rick and Glenn had pushed into the interior of the house, and Maggie had just stepped out of sight to check one of the bedrooms. Ahead of Carol, Daryl was moving toward the living room.

It took half a second for her to see his body language change. Walkers.

Daryl managed to half turn and utter one warning syllable before he abruptly dropped out of sight, staggering behind a wall. The living room floor was a foot lower than the dining room, with two small steps covering the difference. Neither of them had seen it, or if Daryl had seen the steps, the four walkers that were suddenly pushing into the living room from the adjacent hallway distracted him.

In one horrifying second, his ankle rolled and he tripped, hitting the floor out of her line of sight. Carol heard his head slam against the floor with a solid crack, and the walkers’ moans covered the rest. Carol involuntarily gasped and was paralyzed for just a moment. When Daryl didn’t immediately reappear, she hurried forward, lifting her gun and firing.

The first bullet clipped the first walker’s shoulder, getting its attention as the gun report boomed through the house. She fired again, and this time she hit it in the head. The corpse collapsed like a ragdoll, and Carol reached the living room, noting the steps as she turned and fired into the remaining three walkers.

The second walker took a bullet to the cheek and dropped, and it took two more bullets to hit the third walker. The final one snarled and staggered toward her, and Carol chanced a look behind her. Daryl was motionless on the floor on his side, and there was a small circle of blood by his head where he had landed. He was out.

Adrenaline flooded her then, and she spun back around and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked, but the clip was empty. Panic mixed with the adrenaline, and she dropped the useless weapon and looked for something, anything, to stop the lumbering corpse. Carl was calling for help, running toward the skirmish. Carol spotted a lamp on the end table beside a couch that was within reach. It was an antique lamp, the kind with an ornate metal base with no electrical cable.

Carol grabbed it up, knocking off the shade and lifting it like a baseball bat. The walker’s hands were almost on her when she swung. The sharp metal feet of the lamp gouged into the softened skull of the corpse, and blood and chunks of tissue were torn away. The walker staggered but kept coming at her, half of its face now hanging from its exposed cheekbone. Carol cried out as she took a second swing, throwing her weight into it this time.

The lamp’s base lodged itself into the walker’s temple that time, crunching through bone and pushing brain matter out of the exit wound. The walker toppled forward, and Carol started to back step, remembered that Daryl was directly behind her, and shoved the crumpling body to the right, where it landed across the end table.

“Carol!” Maggie skidded into view in the hallway where the walkers had come from.

Carol simply stood there, her voice frozen in her throat as she held the lamp in her hands, shoulders heaving as she gasped for breath. Behind her, Daryl groaned.

“Oh my God,” Maggie maneuvered past the four corpses and around Carol, spotting Carl at the steps. “Get my dad, Carl.”

Rick was already striding into view at the end of the hall near the kitchen, but Carl bolted past him to fetch Hershel. Carol met his eyes for a brief moment, and his gaze dropped to the lamp in her hands, where hair and blood and clumps of tissue were hanging. Carol pushed her nausea down and tossed the lamp aside, turning and kneeling beside Maggie.

“Daryl? Daryl,” she tapped the side of his jaw.

“What happened?” Rick demanded, glancing around the living room as he strode down the steps.

“Walkers—“ was all Maggie said in explanation.

Daryl grimaced on the floor, and one eye peeked open as he stirred. He looked dazed. Relief crashed over Carol as he came to. He seemed to stare at her for a moment in confusion.

“Walkers,” he finally grunted.

“We took care of it,” Carol assured, nodding her head. “It’s all clear.”

She looked to Rick to confirmation. He nodded and holstered his gun, kneeling on Daryl’s other side.

“Anything feel broken?” he asked.

Daryl started to shake his head, grimaced, and lifted a hand to his head, pulling it away to see red on his fingers. “Shit.”

“We’re setting up in the den at the corner of the house,” Rick was speaking to Maggie now.

The younger woman bobbed her head and sprang back to her feet, shuffling out of the way. Rick pulled one of Daryl’s arms across his shoulders, despite Daryl’s muffled griping that he was fine. Carol automatically took his other arm, sliding into the support position as she and Rick hauled Daryl to his feet. Even conscious, he was almost completely dead weight due to the vertigo and disorientation. Maggie grabbed up Carol’s gun and the crossbow, leading the way to the den. Together, Carol and Rick helped Daryl after her.

He was more or less supporting himself by the time they reached the larger room. Lori and Beth were already there, and Carl was standing by Hershel, telling him what had happened, as Glenn and T-Dog also returned from their sweep of the house.

“Were there any others?” Rick asked pointedly.

“One in the master bedroom,” Glenn informed. “That was all.”

“Is he all right?” Lori asked.

“M’fine. Damn,” Daryl muttered.

“His head’s bleeding,” Carol told Hershel as she and Rick deposited Daryl on a recliner, one of the only pieces of cushioned furniture in the den.

Daryl looked belligerent, but he didn’t put up a fight as Hershel walked over to inspect the wound. Carl and Glenn soon went back to the kitchen to finish rummaging for food stores, and Maggie quietly walked over to Carol, offering her the gun back.

“You okay?” she asked softly.

Carol took the gun, but realized her hands were shaking. That was the first time that she’d actively killed walkers…and she had hardly felt anything about it. She had been so absorbed in keeping them away from Daryl that she hadn’t even thought about the fact that she was destroying things that used to be human.

Maggie was staring at her, waiting for an answer. Carol cleared her throat and nodded, giving Maggie’s elbow a light squeeze before dropping her gaze to the empty gun in her hands. Black bloody spatter was dotting her sleeve. Maggie went to help Glenn and Carl, and across the room Lori gestured for Carol to come to her to help her clean away the spatter.

“The cut looks shallow,” Hershel concluded. “But you definitely have a concussion.”

“Lucky me,” Daryl took a rag from Hershel, holding it to the bloody spot on his head.

“Yes, very lucky,” Hershel repeated heavily.

The older man straightened, but Carol felt his eyes on her as she scrubbed the rotted blood from her wrist. Daryl followed Hershel’s look, and Carol met his eyes. The gaze lingered for an extended second, and then he looked away, rotating his ankle.

“Fuck stairs.”

Rick came back in from the hallway, “Carl, Glenn, and Maggie are clearing out the pantry. Looks like enough to last us a few days if we’re careful. We’ll hole up here until then, s’long as no more walkers show up.”

Those were the magic words, and the group en masse seemed to breathe easier. There would be no more running tonight. They could relax, if just for a few days and assuming that no walkers came pounding on their door.

Sitting on the floor beside Lori, Carol leaned back against the wall, exhaling heavily. Suddenly the gun didn’t feel so odd in her hands.


	9. Roadside Diner

“Just pick one.”

“No. Glenn, just leave it alone.”

“C’mon. Everybody has a favorite.”

“I’m not even sure I know what movie you’re talking about.”

Aside from Glenn and Maggie chattering, the roadside diner was quiet. Nobody was asleep. Nobody COULD sleep with the racket they were making. At least Lori and Hershel were pretending to sleep. Daryl and T-Dog were out hunting, and Beth was on watch, leaving Carol, Carl and Rick helpless in listening to the random conversation.

“Yes you do,” Glenn went on, looking to them. “Carol, back me up.”

“Younger brother,” she chimed in without a thought.

“See!” Glenn pointed at her, looking at Maggie for emphasis. “Carol knows what’s up.”

Maggie was deadpan. “They’re fictional characters in a movie. What’s the point in choosing? Is there an audience favorite or something?”

“No, no. NO.” Glenn shook his head earnestly. “You can’t love one without the other, but everybody who has ever seen the movie has a preference.”

“I haven’t seen it,” Carl looked interested.

“No, you were too young,” Rick replied.

The boy looked at his father and then to Glenn for explanation.

“Vigilantism, Boston-style,” Glenn made twin finger pistols and aimed them at the air. “Any filthy criminals slip through the system. Bam! Bam! Twin shots to the back of the head.”

Beth cleared her throat. “Why are you asking her opinion on fictional men?”

Maggie snorted into her fist, and Glenn’s face dropped.

“Because…shut up,” he huffed. “You know what movie I’m talking about.”

Beth nodded.

“And?” Glenn egged her on.

She lifted her shoulders. “I fell asleep halfway through.”

“Fell asl—“ Glenn looked affronted. “How do you even—Party foul!”

Rick straightened abruptly, “Lights.”

They all glanced through the diner windows to see a flash light bobbing along with someone’s step. T-Dog and Daryl had returned from the hunt, nothing between them but what looked like one rabbit in Daryl’s hand. Beth unlocked the door to let them in, and the two men had to shuffle inside through the camp gear and the other members of the group.

“Ain’t much out there,” Daryl said needlessly, holding up the rabbit.

“Any trouble?” Rick asked.

T-Dog shook his head. “So quiet it hurts.”

“Guys, I need a tie-breaker,” Glenn prompted. “Boondock Saints. Pick a brother.”

“Never seen it,” T-Dog replied.

“Never heard of it,” Daryl said flatly.

“You uncultured…” Glenn threw his hands up. “The pennies, the tattoos, the prayer.” He looked around, but aside from Carol, Rick, and Beth, no one seemed familiar to the terms at all. “Seriously? Anybody?”

“Were they Irish?” Maggie abruptly asked.

“Yes!” Glenn jumped in his seat a little. “You saw it!”

“I saw the sequel, I think,” she mumbled.

“Eh, I’ll take it. So? Which one?” Glenn pressed.

Maggie shrugged, “I liked the Mexican guy. Romeo?”

“I thought they were Irish?” Carl asked.

“Yeah, but they had a Mexican friend,” Carol explained.

“The fuck are you people talkin’ about?” Daryl grumbled, skinning the rabbit across the room.

“Okay, three-way tie,” Glenn gestured from himself, to Carol, to Maggie, respectively saying, “One vote Connor, one vote Murphy, and one vote Romeo.”

Rick lifted a finger.

Glenn held out his hands, “Rick, thank you!”

“Smecker.”

Glenn gave a dramatic sigh and flung himself back on his bedroll beside Maggie, who snorted and patted his arm.

“Cop, right,” Glenn waved a hand absently, in surrender. “Let me guess, Maggie, you liked Romeo because he was funny?”

Maggie chuckled and nodded.

Glenn swung his head around to Carol. “And Murphy?”

Carol lifted her shoulders, “I just thought he was attractive.”

Beth choked on a laugh, and Rick closed his eyes in exasperated fatigue. Glenn stared at her. Daryl had stopped mid-skinning, staring at Carol oddly.

“Hopeless,” Glenn mumbled.

“Okay, enough of that,” Rick broke in. “Everybody needs to get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ll head into the nearest town, look for more supplies. We’re all right on food for now. We need to get better equipment for carting our gear around. Containers. Tarps. Something to tie it all down.”

“We passed a gym with a rock wall on the way into town,” Maggie suggested. “They’d have cables and ropes.”

“Still think we should get more ammo instead of cables,” Daryl countered.

“No, she’s right,” Rick bobbed his head. “We do need ammo, but the cold weather is slowing down the walkers. We can take them out with knives until we find more ammunition and guns. Daryl, you and I will go into town at first light to get the cables.”

Daryl didn’t look happy about that priority, but he just nodded and went back to skinning the dead rabbit. “Fine, we’ll get the stupid fucking rope.”

Glenn balked, staring at him incredulously. “Dude…”


	10. Camp by a Creek

“Now there is a beautiful sight,” Maggie snickered from her seat behind Carol.

Carol didn’t move her head, since Maggie was currently in the middle of trimming her hair with makeshift scissors, but she could figure out fairly quickly what the young woman was referring to. Their caravan had been parked by the bank of a small creek for the night. They had stocked up on water, boiled it, and cleaned their weapons. Currently, it looked like Beth had corralled Glenn and T-Dog into helping with the laundry, and the two men were getting…competitive. Carol pursed her lips in a smile. Beside her, Lori was lying back on the soft grass, staring up at the tree canopies while Carol voluntarily rubbed her swollen feet and ankles for her.

Hershel was up the creek a bit showing Rick how to fish, almost out of sight around the end of the shoreline. A few yards away from Beth, Glenn, and T-Dog, it looked like Carl and Daryl had also been roped into laundry duty. Daryl was soaked up to the elbows and scrubbing like a man on a mission; Carol certainly couldn’t complain about the view.

“Now, how close did you want it?” Maggie was saying. “I don’t think I’m gonna be able to make it even.”

Carol started to shrug and felt Maggie gently straighten her head to face forward again, pulling her eyes away from Daryl. “Just as close as you can. I’m not worried about it being even. Nobody to impress out here.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Lori chimed in, still staring up at the trees.

“Oh you wouldn’t?” Carol smirked.

Lori looked at her with a smug grin, “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, how does that motorcycle ride, Carol?” Maggie prompted.

Carol snorted, “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh sure,” Lori sat up. “Glenn just found us a brand new pick up with plenty of cushioned seats, and you elect to—“

“Save a horse, ride a cowboy.” Maggie cackled.

Lori’s face split in a smile and she covered her mouth with a laugh.

Carol folded her arms, mock-pouting. “That is ridiculous.”

“No helmets…” Maggie chuckled. “Not very good protection, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh God,” Carol lifted her hands to her face.

“Wait, wait, I got one,” Lori held up a hand. “Since you ride behind, does that make you the big spoon?”

Maggie let out a loud laugh that made Carol turn around and take the scissors from her. A good thing, considering that Maggie was shaking from the giggles. The men in the creek glanced their way at the noise…even Rick and Hershel.

“Everything okay?” Glenn asked.

Lori waved him, wiping a tear of mirth from her eyes. “Fine, Glenn.”

Carol incidentally made eye contact with Daryl, who was wringing out a shirt in the shallows. He muttered something to Carl, pointing at the shirt in the boy’s hands. Carl fluffed the drenched shirt out, looked at the area that Daryl had pointed to, and started scrubbing at the spot that he’d apparently missed. Daryl, for his part, grabbed up whatever else he’d been washing in the creek and clomped out of the water.

“What’re ya’ll laughin’ at?” He grunted.

“Nothing, these two just think they’re comedians,” Carol remarked.

“Yeah, nothing to think too…long…and…hard…about.” Maggie drawled.

Daryl’s left eye squinted as Carol waited for the ground to open up and swallow her. Lori snorted beside her. He looked at them all like they were crazy, slinging one freshly washed article of clothing over his shoulder casually. The shirt wasn’t dry yet, so the action wound up sending a line of sprinkles raining off the cloth, mostly hitting Carol in the face and the front. Maggie and Lori got a few sprinkles, but the brunt of it got Carol.

She twitched as it startled her, as did the other two women, and Daryl grimaced.

“Sorry. Did I get you wet?”

Maggie and Lori lost their shit, causing Daryl to legitimately jump in surprise.

“That’s it,” Carol waved her hands at the two women. “Shoo. Go do something useful.”

Maggie stood out from behind Carol, helping Lori to her feet. “But I wasn’t done cutting your hair.”

Carol turned the scissors in her hands so that the handles were toward Daryl. “Daryl, could you finish me off?”

“OH!” Lori clapped a hand over her mouth, and Maggie stumbled against the car.

“GET!” Carol shooed them in earnest. “They’re like twelve year olds, I swear…”

In the meantime, Daryl had taken the proffered scissors and plopped down into Maggie’s vacated space behind Carol. She sat ramrod straight at that realization, but Daryl just prodded for her to face forward so that he could get on with it. She felt his fingers in her hair and then the scissors cutting through near the scalp. Her thoughts went a little hazy at the touch.

“When the fuck did somethin’ funny happen? Good Lord,” he muttered under his breath.


	11. Car Camping

On occasion, there were no secure houses or structures to hunker in for the night, and the group was forced to sleep in the cars. It was always uncomfortable, but luckily they had only had to do that twice since fleeing the farm five months ago. This was the third time.

Dawn was breaking at the end of Maggie’s shift on watch. Their three car caravan had pulled over in the front yard of a house, the majority of which was burned down. From her spot leaning against the tailgate of the silver Dodge pickup, she had front row seats to the morning dance. It started with T-Dog, the permanent early riser, climbing out of the front seat of the silver pick up and stretching his arms high over his head. He’d send her a nod in good morning.

Next was whoever had been in the truck with T-Dog that night; this time around it was Glenn and Carl. She could see Glenn wriggling out from under Carl, who had at some point turned Glenn into his personal pillow during his sleep. All the shifting and moving would wake the boy, but he usually didn’t emerge from the back seat for another half hour or so.

“Hey,” Glenn greeted her, and Maggie smiled as he kissed her good morning. “Everything okay?”

“S’quiet,” she said it with relief. Quiet was good. Quiet was wonderful.

But quiet was fleeting, and this morning it was broken by the screeching hinges on the back seat of her dad’s red Suburban as Daryl unfolded himself out of the vehicle, half of his face red with the indentions of the uneven seat cushions on his skin. The noise roused Rick, who had slept in the front seat, and he was soon gingerly hauling himself out as well, obviously still sore from the run in with some walkers yesterday.

“I knew I heard running water last night,” T-Dog remarked, having sauntered over to the other side of the road and spied a spindly creek nestled beyond the ditch.

“Yeah, barely,” Glenn snorted.

“ ‘Barely’ should fill our canteens though,” Maggie pointed out, handing her rifle over to Rick, who grunted in half-awake acknowledgement as he took over watch.

Carl crawled out of the truck about the same time Lori climbed out of the front seat of the green Tucson, and with identical expressions of disapproval at the crisp morning sunlight that was hitting their eyes. Carol quietly got out of the other side of the Tucson and made her way over to the back of the Suburban, where the canteens were kept.

Maggie made her way in that direction, passing Beth who was climbing out of the Tucson in the middle of a jaw-breaking yawn. Their dad was already awake and jotting notes in the little notebook that he kept on his person nowadays.

“Think there could be any fish in that creek?” Carol prompted as Maggie reached her.

“Doubt it,” Maggie pushed her hair from her eyes. “Looks barely ankle deep from here.”

Carol hummed lightly at that, shaking each of the containers to see how much water they needed. “If we ever find a place to actually stay for more than a week, we should find some traps or something to catch animals…Be a lot safer than going off into the woods alone.”

Maggie heard both sides of that comment. She heard the tired truth that there was less and less food left behind in the houses that they came across nowadays. Other survivors were picking clean whatever scraps the previous families hadn’t taken with them or what hadn’t gone rotten in the passing months. Canned goods, dried food, things with a long shelf life: they were becoming fewer and further in between. In a few months, a few years, however humanity progressed after this, they would need to be able to forage and hunt.

She also heard the apprehensive concern in Carol’s tone that didn’t like the long stints of time that their only real hunter was gone, alone, in the painful silence of the woods. Rick would go along with Daryl sometimes, if the patch of woods where they were seemed particularly sketchy, but for the most part, Daryl made him stay behind, claiming he was noisy and had no instinct for it. Even on good days, the group usually had to split half a dozen squirrels and a few snakes among themselves, maybe the occasional rabbit…He brought back a whole living cow once that had been obliviously living in an abandoned field.

Maggie couldn’t remember the last time she heard Lori laugh so hard as when Daryl had left with big talk about bringing in some wild game only to come back toting a cow on a bit of rope. The eating had been good that night, and the humor of it had lasted for another two days after that.

“Yeah,” she agreed with Carol. “Or a garden. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a tomato. Or corn on the cob…Hell, I’d even eat celery.”

Carol snickered, “Well, let’s see, we’ve had squirrel, snake, cow, rabbit, deer—“

“Bacon,” Lori entered the conversation. “I miss bacon. I dream about it sometimes…”

Maggie chuckled and patted the woman’s shoulder. “I know. You talk in your sleep.”

Lori didn’t even look sorry, just wistful for her long lost bacon dreams. “I could almost taste it when I woke up this morning.”

Maggie saw Daryl prepping his crossbow and aiming himself toward the woods. “Hey.”

He kept walking, glancing in their direction. “What?”

“You’re going out already?” Carol tugged the straps of three canteens over her shoulder.

“Breakfast ain’t gonna catch itself,” he shrugged.

“Bring home the bacon, Daryl,” Lori shielded her eyes from the morning sun.

Daryl’s expression was deadpan, and he snorted as he shook his head and kept walking for the woods. “Yeah, sure.”

Lori watched him go, “If he actually brings back a pig, so help me, I can’t be held accountable for my actions.”

Maggie exchanged a look with Carol, who snorted into her wrist and angled for the other side of the road. “C’mon, let’s boil some water.”

“Hershel, if Daryl brings back a pig, could you make bacon?” Glenn asked, having overheard the women talking.

Hershel had gotten out of the Tucson and was talking to T-Dog. “I could.”

“Everybody send Daryl bacon vibes!” Carl announced, wiggling his fingers at the woods.

Maggie would have shaken her head, if she didn’t see Carol, Beth, and Glenn all also wiggling their fingers at the woods. What the Hell, she sent spirit fingers in Daryl’s direction too. It definitely couldn’t hurt…and dammit, now she missed bacon too.


	12. House of Horror

The house had two levels. That was starting to become the pattern. Second floors worked well as a lookout post for the watch. After a few months on the road, they were starting to better shape their criteria for what an effective shelter was: no more than two floors, no less than two exits, no more than five walkers on the first level to take out. More than five usually meant there were more, that the place was infested.

While Rick and Carl finished sweeping the ground floor, T-Dog and Daryl methodically moved through the second floor, taking out anything that moved. T-Dog had found a raccoon huddled in the bathroom; it wasn’t much of a dinner, but it was something. After clearing his half of the level, he was just heading for the stairs when he saw Daryl abruptly duck into one of the last unchecked rooms.

The groan of a walker was unmistakable, but it sounded…different. Higher pitched. When he didn’t immediately hear the phewt of the crossbow, T-Dog gripped his fire stoker and went to check it out. He hadn’t taken two steps before Daryl lumbered out of the room. All the blood had gone from his face, and he looked on the verge of getting sick.

“What—“ T-Dog started.

Daryl raised a hand to keep him back, leveling an adamant look at him.

The groan persisted.

“Clear?” Rick called up in a hoarse whisper.

Daryl hefted the crossbow back up, still looking close to vomiting.

“Don’t let ‘em come up here,” he snarled, all but forcing himself back into the room.

T-Dog was almost leery to follow, and he glanced down to see Rick halfway up the stairs.

Phewt.

Silence.

“Clear,” T-Dog nodded to Rick.

Rick looked quizzical for a moment, but then he turned and went back down to signal the others that they could start moving the gear. Once he was out of view, T-Dog crossed back to the room, pushing open the door and stepping inside, just in time to see Daryl bend over a plastic paint bucket and empty his stomach. The crossbow clattered to the floor, thankfully not loaded.

“Hey, man—“ T-Dog took a step toward him, but he abruptly looked away.

He never could stand the sight or the sound of vomit. He could avoid looking at it, but there was no muting the sound of the sick hitting in the inside of the bucket, or the guttural noise coming out of Daryl’s throat. It didn’t matter as soon as he looked away though, because the sight at the center of the room paralyzed him.

It was the master bedroom, and it looked like whatever survivors had come before them had holed up in this room. Most of their supplies had been left behind in a mad dash, probably overrun or attacked, like it always was. The body on the bed had been torn apart, at any rate. The torso looked completely hollowed out, and innards were strewn across the opposite side of the bed. The only damage aside from that was the bullet hole in the forehead.

No bites or chew marks on the arms or legs. Just the stomach. Walkers hadn’t devoured the corpse. There weren’t even any walkers on this floor. He had heard the moans, heard Daryl’s crossbow go off, but this woman had been put down by a bullet. The blood trail across the right side of the bed caught his attention again, as it disappeared on the floor out of view.

Daryl straightened, wiping his mouth. “C’mon, they’re gonna wonder what’s takin’ so long.”

He made for the door, making no indication of clearing out the disemboweled corpse, nor to retrieve the arrow that he’d shot…wherever he’d shot it.

“We need to move this—“ T-Dog pointed.

“No,” Daryl spat, not looking directly at him. “Nobody comes up here. I got watch. Tell ‘em there’s nothin’ up here worth lookin’ at.”

T-Dog had never seen Daryl spooked like this. After all the walkers they’d seen, in so many different states of dismemberment and mutilation, this one woman who had been carved out was getting to him? He stared at the man in confusion. Daryl saw the question being aimed at him, and he visibly cringed.

“I’ll take care of it. Nobody needs to see this…’specially Lori.”

The horror clicked into place. The woman on the bed, her stomach torn open…from the inside…The trail of blood that led off the edge of the bed…The one fired arrow…

“Jesus,” he whispered.

“He ain’t here,” Daryl growled, gesturing for the door.

They both shuffled out of the room, and T-Dog swallowed against his gag reflex as he closed the door behind him. Daryl was making his way to the opposite side of the second floor to find the optimal room to serve as lookout. T-Dog eyed him for a second, shook his head, and headed for the stairs that led to the bottom floor. He took one step before hearing Daryl gag in his throat again, followed by a muffled curse and the sound of the wall getting punched or kicked. He glanced toward the lookout room.

T-Dog muttered, “I’ll be up in a few hours to take watch.”

He got a grunt in response, and then he finished heading downstairs. The others were already collapsed in heaps, not even bothering to get comfortable at this point. They had been on the road for nearly a day and a half, only stopping for gas.

“Anything?” Rick asked, querying about food or supplies.

T-Dog pursed his lips and shook his head, avoiding his eyes. “People before us wiped the place out. Daryl’s taking watch. Told him I’d take over in a few hours.”

“You drove all day,” Maggie prompted. “Maybe someone else should—“

“No, I’ll do it,” T-Dog sank to his seat beside Glenn, avoiding Lori’s concerned look.

Rick gave a short nod, and the rest of the group finished settling in.

T-Dog set the fire stoker aside, glancing up at the ceiling briefly.

It wasn’t like he was going to be sleeping tonight anyway.


	13. The New Norm

Three months after leaving the Greene farm, the criteria for picking a shelter for the night had just about become involuntary. They couldn’t always find a place that hit every rung on that ladder, but more often than not a spot would hit the most important ones. Like the house where they had stopped that afternoon: two levels, at least two exits, no broken windows, preferably one big room for them all to huddle in together to conserve heat, and a good view of their perimeter in case they needed to make a hasty exit.

Rick could tell by the quiet that the others had settled in for the night. Conversation was getting shorter nowadays; there was less to talk about and less energy to expend on it. Shorthand and body language were starting to take over their vocabulary. He couldn’t complain: it was safer and more efficient at any rate. The only voices he could hear from the great room were Maggie and T-Dog.

He had taken first watch, as had become the norm. Daryl usually took the second watch, then either T-Dog or Carol or whoever was up to it that night. They had had a hard march for the past three days. Storms and herds had been at every turn lately, and none of the buildings that they’d scavenged had turned out much in the way of supplies. They were living on half empty jars of peanut butter and cans of beans and whatever animal Daryl managed to hunt down in these barren woods. The past three days, they hadn’t caught anything. Daryl had been one of the first to turn in at the shelter that afternoon. Given that he was normally the last person to fall asleep, it had been almost alarming how quickly he’d passed out, but being the only person who knew how to hunt and track in these woods…Rick couldn’t blame him for being exhausted.

The voices had quieted downstairs, and Rick shifted from his spot on the second floor. He had staked out the master bedroom since it had big windows with good visibility, but it still left the back of the house and the back yard unsecured. He had taken to moving periodically from the master bedroom to the home office on the opposite side of the floor, which gave him am almost 360 degree view of the perimeter. The treeline was pushed back about a hundred acres, and the sky was empty that night, so moonlight flooded the property. It was quiet. There was no movement. So much so it was uncomfortable.

Hershel had said they were low on, well, damn near everything. If any of their group got sick, got hurt, needed stitches or antibiotics or antiseptic, then they were screwed. It was waking up a hypochondriac part of Rick that he hadn’t felt since Carl was an infant, when every hiccup and every cough amounted to a deadly illness. Then it was every bump and bruise amounting to a mortal wound. They had to hoard their resources and just try to will away any ailments.

He just thanked whoever was listening that none of their group had allergies or any conditions that required daily medication or dietary restrictions. They scrounged what they could for prenatal care for Lori, which was surprisingly more plentiful than he had figured. In all the panic and the chaos of the end of the world, somehow items related to pregnancy had largely gone underlooted. Lori had nearly cried with gratitude when Glenn brought back a full jar of peanut butter from a supply run. Every few weeks, they would make a run for tampons. A year ago, a guy like Glenn might have balked at that shopping list, but that had been then and this was now.

They found enough clothes to keep them from freezing and even a kerosene heater for the really bad nights. Bullets and guns were hard to come by, but they were learning to make do with quieter knives and melee weapons. Rick flexed his hand around the stock of the silver Python pistol in his grip. Melee weapons were riskier; they required closer proximity to walkers and more strength. Luckily, the humid winter was making the rotting corpses softer and easier to disable and put down.

He exhaled heavily and began the trek back from the home office to the master bedroom, peering down the stairs to the first floor below. The soles of Beth’s boots were just visible from where she was curled up beside her sister. Rick flexed his jaw and glanced toward the big windows of the master bedroom. The fatigue felt like it was emanating right out of his bones, seeping through muscle and tissue and rolling out of him in waves. Every single soul in that great room felt that same exhaustion, and it made it almost impossible for him to give up second watch. He just wanted to let them rest and recover and take a break, but he couldn’t.

If they relaxed, they died. That was the only rule this world followed anymore.

So with another heavy sigh, Rick made his way downstairs and turned into the great room. As he suspected, no one was vertical. Beth and Maggie were curled up beside each other, with Glenn on Maggie’s other side. T-Dog was the closest to being upright, but he was just as asleep as Lori, who was on her side beside him. Carol had settled down on her stomach beside Daryl, as had sort of become a norm that privately amused the rest of the group, but what was even more amusing was that at some point in his sleep, Daryl had shifted closer and was currently using the small of Carol’s back like a pillow.

Rick found himself missing technology a lot: hot showers, GPS, electricity, to name a few, but for just a second, he really missed the camera on his old cellphone, because that was fucking precious.

With a snort, he started to nudge his boot against Daryl’s knee to bring him out of it for second watch, but before he could, Maggie was pushing up onto one elbow and blinking blearily up at him.

“I got it,” she murmured, disentangling herself from her own cuddle puddle on the floor and climbing to her feet. “It’d be a crime to interrupt that.”

Rick wanted to protest, Maggie looked beyond tired, but so was he and so was Daryl and T-Dog and all the others. He was going to get a half-lidded, grunted greeting anyway, and Maggie was already awake and volunteering.

“All right,” Rick nodded once, gesturing for her to take a rifle with her.

Maggie wrapped herself in her thick coat, plucked up the rifle from their pile of supplies, and slid past him to head upstairs. Rick picked out a spot on the floor between Glenn and Carol. The carpet was thick and lush like new, much better than the hard wood or tile that they’d seen in the past. He got as comfortable as his aching joints would let him and finally wound up on his back, staring at the speckled white ceiling. He closed his eyes and felt the living warmth of the sleeping bodies around him.

Alive. They were all still alive. They were still okay. They would be all right for another day. He kept the Python within arms’ reach just in case as he succumbed to sleep.


End file.
